"Likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland", The Stinging Fly magazine.
If you wish to invite Kevin to give a poetry reading, do a talk or facilitate a writing workshop email kphiggins@hotmail.com or phone 087-6431748.

Patricia Ryan was an assistant to Cox while he was an MEP
and also worked for Cox’s Progressive Democrat colleague Mary Harney while she
was in government. She has no specific experience of working within the arts
sector.

She
was appointed to the job of CEO of Limerick City of Culture. Pat Cox is the
Chair of the Board. The job was not advertised.

Ms
Ryan’s lack of arts experience showed when she asked that lyrics in a rap song
composed for Limerick City of Culture 2014 by two young people from Moyross,
Nathan Keane and Calvin McNamara, be changed. See
today’s Irish Times. The
lyrics remained the same and you can hear them here. The rap song starts about one minute and fifty four seconds in.

Limerick
City of Culture 2014 began on January 1st i.e. on Wednesday. Then
yesterday, January 2nd, the Artistic Director Karl Wallace (below) and two
other people involved in programming the festival all resigned.

I've
always thought Pat Cox a knob of the most extravagant order, with all due respect to
knobs everywhere, which can actually be quite useful in certain circumstances,
certainly more useful than the appropriately named Mr Cox. Surely now he should
be told by the government to resign as Chairman of the Board and his former
assistant, Patricia Ryan, should be asked to clear her desk also? It isn’t
working.

Pat Cox, second from right, urging people to say yes to a bunch of stuff

I'm
not a petition signer generally, when it comes to arts related issues. Those
who rush to sign them, especially the online variety, tend to be a mix of the most
tragic bastards going and people who fantasise that the arts establishment and perhaps
also the Jews are conspiring against them.

However,
I would certainly put my name to a petition of artists and arts organisers
calling on the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan,
and the Limerick City and County manager, Conn Murray, to tell Patricia Ryan and Pat Cox
that, though it's been fun, it is - in the words of Andrew Lloyd Weber - time to say goodbye.